Everything great in the world is done by neurotics; they alone founded our religions and created our masterpieces. ~Marcel Proust

Thursday, February 26, 2015

The Obamacare Reality is Here

Yesterday, while delivering some heavy duty medical equipment to one of our business accounts, I chatted with a young employee of theirs. He was about 30 years old and I could tell he was fairly intelligent.

Here in Boise, we have a huge supply of medical equipment refurbishers. The margins are enormous. It is nothing for these refurbishers to buy a piece of medical equipment for five thousand bucks, put a little work into it, and re-sell it for eighty thousand dollars to some second tier medical provider who cannot afford to pay half a million for the newest device.

I have another friend who works for a company that quite literally drives a U-Haul truck around a population center in surrounding states- asking dentists if they have old equipment for sale. Old fashioned cold calling. They buy just about everything. Once the truck is full- they drive it back to Boise. They have been doing this for years. That little company employs 25 people all making 10-15 bucks an hr. No benefits of course.

In Boise, that's the standard wage everywhere. The owner gets rich while everyone else scrapes by. This is the new American business model. We call it, "Living someone else's dream."

So that is who I was talking to. A 30 year old man living someone else's dream. He had a wife and two kids. He told me he had just finished his taxes and he was screwed. I asked him why.

He said that he and his two children had no insurance. Obamacare costs are currently 700 a month or 8400 a year. He simply couldn't afford it. So he said, he was trying to come up with the penalty payment of 700. I had the impression the kids were not his deduction. He added, "it makes me sick to know that we pay pennies for this medical equipment and re-sell it for enormous amounts." He said that's how you know that the medical community has so much fucking money- that they think nothing of paying small fortunes for 15 year old pieces of equipment. Just the shipping costs alone usually amount to 2-3 thousand dollars.

On a personal level, one of the things that pisses me off the most about Obamacare is that the original bill writers arbitrarily assigned 11 thousand bucks as the "poverty level." Eleven thousand bucks is not even minimum wage. Nobody can live on 11,000 dollars. Period. If you are making 900 a month- you are in deep shit. However, the bill writers chose this level as the starting point for those who qualify for subsidies. That way- anyone making 44k or 400% of the "poverty level" a year- pays full price for Obamacare. Anyone making less than that gets some sort of subsidy.

Had they used 15k as the poverty level, most Americans would have been subsidized. They did not do that because it didn't pencil out- they needed every penny they could get. All Obamacare was ever meant to do- was to steal money from all of the healthy and productive citizens that lost jobs and benefits in 2008- and force them by law- back into the healthcare insurance system which was bleeding losses. That's it.

This is social engineering. Discrimination based on wages. The lowest earners, or the people least capable of having children and supporting them- get free health care and thus they have children. Higher wage earners, the people more likely to support their children- cannot afford to have children. It's a sort of cultural de-evolution where the least intelligent and least productive are encouraged to reproduce. The intelligent and productive people realize they cannot afford to have kids.

That is the Obamacare reality. It doesn't exactly bode well for the future.

That 30 year old kid is saving 8400 bucks a year in premiums along with a 2000 dollar deductible. That's net money after taxes. It's like a second mortgage except you have nothing to show for it. Strangely, millions of people aren't buying in. I do not care what type of bullshit our government is spewing about sign ups- people aren't going to buy this.

In the meantime, the rest of us are forced to try and find healthcare and pay cash for it. I cannot tell you how poor the level of service has been for me. Doctors and clinics simply don't want you. They don't need the business when they can gouge ridiculous prices that they know third party providers will pay.

In the mean time- anyone owing a penalty better pay it. Because if you don't pay the penalty you can damn sure bet that a few years from now you'll be receiving correspondence from the IRS. They'll be asking for a lot more than the original penalty and they'll get it.

And to think we fought a revolutionary war over 3% in taxes. I'll take King George III any day- over this clown.

6 comments:

Anonymous
said...

FRANKENSTEIN GOV'T AT ITS FINEST. Great piece. We're right back where we were under King George; gov't and taxation, with ZERO representation. Look at the comment sections on any major issue. A clear dividing line : the 1%-rule vs the 99%-outrage, but still like rats in a cage (kudos to THE SMASHING PUMPKINS). And those thinking they'll scam Medicaid for it, are in for a nasty surprise in asset clawing, if they own anything. Equipment refurb and price gouge round II-is an example of some of the cost insensitive crap that goes on, it's peanuts in the great health care wealth transfer. Brian, please post the article: The Drug That Is Bankrupting America.

Great piece. I cannot believe some grass roots revolution is not happening. The idiot Obama rules like a king and absolutely NOTHING happens. WTF? I do not get how no one has the balls to start articles of impeachment. That Shemp Howard at the FED is jsut as outrageous. Noone gives a rats ass about anyone but Banksters.

I agree. The entire country should be up in arms over this. And Obama, clearly thinks he can do whatever the fuck he wants. And I think he's right. You think these people actually have the balls to impeach the first black President?

Not a chance in hell. They don't work for us. Not for a long, long time.

Actually King George and his Posterity have never been out of the corporate pecking order calling the shots here. See the Paris Treaty where he dictated the terms of the peace settlement.

Under Article 4 of the Paris Treaty it states “It is agreed that creditors on either side shall meet with no lawful impediment to the recovery of the full value in sterling money of all bona fide debts heretofore contracted.”

They're still collecting... I'm certainly glad you at least at the level of your comprehension of this problem which is very confused with lollipop historical fantasies that don't jive with legal historical facts at least, you don't like it.